On December 5–6, 2023 at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, CA, hundreds of developers and software engineers will come together at PrestoCon 2023 to support and learn more about Presto, the open-source SQL query engine for data analytics and the Open Data Lakehouse.

We’re excited for the future of Presto. This year, we announced watsonx.data, our Presto-based open data lakehouse that is a fit-for-purpose data store, built on an open lakehouse architecture and supported by querying, governance and open data formats to access and share data.

If you’re involved in data analytics or data infrastructure, PrestoCon is a must-attend event. Here are three reasons you might consider attending:

1. You’ll get the latest innovation updates about next-gen Presto, the native C++ worker for Presto.

At PrestoCon, there’s a track dedicated to the latest advancements in the native C++ worker for Presto—code named Prestissimo—built on the open-source Velox project. There’s been a lot of work and innovation that’s gone into Prestissimo over the last few months, and leading contributors from Bytedance, IBM and Meta will be sharing that work.

2. You’ll hear more from IBM leaders and engineers on the latest advancements of both open-source Presto and watsonx.data.

At IBM we’re strong advocates of the open-source Presto project with 5 Presto committers and dozens of contributors, all of whom are working on building and executing on the project roadmap. 

Watsonx.data is our data store built on an open data lakehouse architecture with Presto. We’ll share more about what we’ve been working on with Presto in watsonx.data. We’re also working closely with the Presto community on advancing open-source Presto, including Prestissimo, and look forward to presenting our work.

Sessions we’re excited about attending:

1. VP Hybrid Data Management Vikram Murali’s keynote, where he’ll share more about why IBM chose Presto for the watsonx.data open data lakehouse, and IBM’s key contributions to Presto open source.
2. Software Engineer and Presto Committer Aditi Pandit’s Intro to Prestissimo session, which will give the community an overview of next-gen Presto and the work going into the C++ native worker.
3. Research Scientists Berthold Reinwald and Nasrullah Sheikh will be sharing more about their Presto Connector for vector search on data indexed by vector databases.
4. Software Engineer Zac Blanco’s session, highlighting IBM’s work on statistics with sampling using Iceberg on Presto.

3. You can get hands-on with Presto in technical workshops

If you want to get hands-on with Presto, PrestoCon workshops are a great way to do that. Created for beginners to advanced Presto users, there will be three workshops on different Presto topics. We recommend you register for these quickly, as capacity is limited and they’ll probably sell out soon (buying a pass to PrestoCon gives you free access to register for a workshop):

1. Getting Started with Presto: get Presto running locally, connect data sources, run queries (Beginner)
2. Building an Open Data Lakehouse with Presto and Apache Hudi: Put the building blocks in place to build your own Open Data Lakehouse (Beginning)
3. Getting Started with Prestissimo on Docker: For devs and engineers who are interested in getting their hands on Prestissimo (Intermediate)

PrestoCon 2023 is going to be a fantastic event for developers and engineers who are interested in open source and cutting-edge innovation. We’re looking forward to getting together in-person with the community for two days, sharing our work and learning more about Prestissimo.

Whether you’re a seasoned Presto expert or just getting started, this community conference offers an inside look into the latest innovation and community news. Early bird pricing (50 USD) concludes on October 31. Register today and don’t miss out on the chance to be a part of PrestoCon!